#702 - 16 Lessons From 700 Episodes
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is me to celebrate seven hundred episodes of modern wisdom. Ee broke down some of my favorite lessons, insights and quotes from the last hundred also pisos.

So today, expect to learn how your expectations define your happiness more than your circumstances. What money of thinking is why? The above paradox is my favorite new idea, the problem of taking advice from super successful people, how to actually achieve enlightenment. My favorite mindset, hack for doing the right thing, and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the wise and very wonderful me.

What's happening? People, welcome back to the show. IT is a seven hundred and second episode. IT won't been seven hundred, but human man took that spot. So I guess I can really kick him off to do this arbitrary n through lessons.

If you are relatively new here over the last hundred episodes, you might not know that around about every hundred, I break up a bunch of lessons that i've got from the show or from life or from writing my newsletter, and I get to run through them. So today you going to get to go through as many as i've got time for from the last nine months or so. And there are some absolute bangers.

And that before I get started, if you haven't already, neutronic is alive now my first ever product. IT is the only thing that you need to drink to get absolutely dial in, no matter what you need to do to be more focused, attentive, to improve your memory. This thing is nominal.

so.

Without further or do, by the way, new tonic dot com, if you need that without further to do your expectations, define your happiness more than your circumstances. And this is something that I knew intuitively, but needed a couple of quotes to kind of really synthesize IT. So timer ban says, if you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished.

But we wish to be happier than other people. And this is always difficult, for we believe others are happier than they are, montescue said this three hundred years ago, and we're still working on this one. So tim urban resurfacing, that famous quote really highlights the asymmetry between what we see of ourselves and what we see if everyone else, right? Because humans are comparative relative beings, we don't just judge what we are in isolation.

We judge IT as a part of the entire hierarch of society, is not just about being in a situation and is being good. It's about being in a Better situation than we were before and also a Better one than the people that were around and also a Better one then our parents were in when they were outraged. This is a intergenerational competition theory is referred to us.

Chilly mongo had a really great insight where he said, the world isn't driven by greed, is driven by envy. Our lives are objectively the best humanity has ever had, yet complaining and dissatisfaction is as high as ever, and also because everyone usually only shows the world the best of themselves. This means that we see our own misery and our fAilings and foibles and vacillation from a front row seat while we watch the highlight real of everyone else.

And this makes us think that other people are doing Better than they really are. And when we feel the delta between where we are and where we imagine they are, IT hurts, right? There is no such thing as objective wealth. Everything is relative and most relative to those around you. That's for Morgan housel.

And this kind of a way to look at this, that your circumstances are one a indication of your happiness, but your expectations are want to and you can either bring your circumstances up to meet your expectations or try as best you can to bring your expectations down. But the problem is, no one is going to feel, find up or romantic about the opportunity of leaving lots on the table, right? This isn't very homos y pilled to say, oh yeah, i'm just gonna CT.

The less of myself, i'm going to leave as much as I can on the table because I understand that the gap between my circumstances, my expectations or our happiness sits. So by having lower expectations, I can increase my happiness. That didn't kind of feels like like folding almost to this ineffable force that out there trying to crush us.

But I don't know. I think I think there's something to IT in as much as you can take satisfaction in the things that you have done. I was talking to a dan bulls area in someone that you might not think of is a fund of like life bro wisdom but is a really smart guy.

And we were talking about how um each time that you achieve a new left of success, IT essentially just creates a new bar for you to meet again in the future. And that sounds I don't know, you might sound kind of try. But the problem with a rapid increase in status or wealth or or accurate or whatever, is that all that you're thinking about is, oh god, that's now the new bar that I need to get to.

So for instance, let's say that we released a youtube video and IT breaks some record for twenty four, our place that take us a million place in now, which I think in a day which is around about current record, there is uh elation at the fact that we ve done IT but then also this uh dispended cy in the back of your mind what you think, oh my god, that's the new bar. In order for us to get another best record, we have to do a million one point one million plays in a day. And that's terrifying.

It's also a reason, I think, why i'm not so brought in on universal basic income being a solution if A I automate all of our jobs and starts producing Better podcasts than me. Because as soon as humans reach an acceptable level of existence, they start wanting to push for more in order to stand out from the crowd. And a flat hierarchy doesn't stick about for long.

So even if every single person earns the same amount of money, people will just find something else to compete on, right? So in twenty one hundred, when everyone's needs a matter and nobody needs to go to work or something, we're going to be collecting leaves or wives or social credit score system points or something, like you are naturally gone to stratify out into a hierarchy. Because this is not about your absolute happiness. That is all about your relative happiness, your relative attractiveness, your relative wealth.

God, sad said this on the episode a couple of weeks ago, right? He said, um if you want to be happy and satisfied with your sex life, you not only need to have the amount of sex that you want, but you want to be having a little bit more sex than all of your friends around you so yeah um happiness and h satisfaction in life does not exist in a vacuum as much as you and me may think yeah fantastic. I can do this from first principles.

That's not the way that IT works. So yeah ah be careful about your expectations another one about mono thinking, which got summer backs up on the internet couple of weeks ago, which is great that was by grinder bogle. He says you can engage someone's ignorance by the number of phenomena they explain with the same answer.

Those who blame many different issues like war, poverty and pollution on just one cause, like capitalism, are recycling explanations, because the demand for answers outstrips their supply. So godman, the demand for anis outstript their supply, so they keep on repurposing. The only answer that they do know everything is because of toxic masculinity, or everything is because of climate change, or everything is because of progressive ideology, or whatever.

IT is right? And IT got me on to another idea, which might explain why you get ostrog's sometimes for not being a card Carrying extremist or a cookie cutter. Ideo gue, so if I know one of you reviews and from IT I can accurately predict everything else, you believe that you're not a serious thinker, right? So if you tell me your view on abortion and from IT, I know your stance on immigration and health care and gun control and vaccines and taxation, IT seems likely that you haven't arrived at all of those beliefs on your own.

Rather, you just unquestioningly adopted an entire sweeter beliefs from some group, right? You've outsource your world view to the crowd and these people are very predictable, right? I can be very confident about what we'll say if a new social campaign movement comes along because it's exactly the same as what everybody else in that group will say.

And this is why anyone who thinks for themselves and doesn't adhere to a cookie cutter ideology wholesale is so unpopular, right? You are an unreliable ally. truly.

You might agree with me on abortion, but I know that you disagree with me on your opinion of Donald trump. So i'm very skeptic of you in the future, right? These unreliable allies need to be treated with much more skepticism and distance. And in a tribal warfare game, the most reliable members are the most popular.

And I think that this is something reassuring to remember if you ever feel like you don't fit in, or like people sometimes don't treat you with the same degree of a like tribal acceptance that you notice other people do, even people who are perhaps compromising what they believe, compromising the you're aware that they don't actually believe the things that they're saying yet. They say them and somehow members of the group would rather have a lying compatriots than an honest adversary, or even just like an honest associate, right? Yeah, I think I felt that a good bit myself.

I felt that whether it's being accused of on the same video, being a blue pilled cook and a uh, a right wing bigger right by my opposite people pointing in the same, in the opposite direction, it's just it's an interesting one, not reassuring in some ways. And this leads into probably my favorite new idea that i'm kind of obsessed at the moment, which is the aboon paradox. The ability paradox is a situation in which a group makes a decision that is contrary to the desires of that group's members because each member assumes the others approve of IT.

IT explains how a number of accurate individuals can become. It's when they get together. So think emperors new clothes, right? And acquaints invites you to his wedding despite not wanting you there, because he thinks you want to attend.

You attend despite not wanting to because you think he wants you there. Or at A A business meeting, someone suggest an idea that he thinks the others will like. For instance, recruiting a trans influencer is the face of a brand. Each member has misgivings about what IT is, but assumes that the others will consider them transform if they speak out. So everyone approved the idea despite no one actually liking IT or uh, every member of a family in north korea hates communism, but they never mention this to each other because each assumes that the others approve of IT.

And I think I wondered for a goodwill about how rational people that I knew in private held a quite baLanced beliefs, a quite Normal belief or just a uh a relatively Normal world view seem to change an awful lot when they got into a group and not just in A A performative way, but that that the actual ground ethics seemed to adjust like there are a different person, not only in presentation, but in content to in substance as well. so. It's just again, it's reassuring.

I think if you're somebody that sit anywhere outside of the absolute cookie cutter extremist on bedsides ideology, you are going to be observed as an unreliable ally by the people that are further out to the right or the left than you, because they are, by definition, more predictable. The further towards the middle that you get, the less predictable you are. And this, whether it's to do with sports, right, if you're the sort of person that will both praise and criticize your sports team, right, or or praising, criticize your child sports team, all of these things, the lack of predictability, the lack of a cookie cut or ideology about anything means that people treat with moskeeters ism.

Because in the future, they can't accurately project whether or not you're going to be on that side or on the side of someone else that they absolutely hate or someone else hadn't even thought of much, much easier. Yeah we don't need to worry about john. John john z is john sweet, john sweatin john outside so yeah I think useful lesson to know.

Um another one that I actually had illustrated recently, which was pretty cool by um visit Andrew, was about the reason that you should stop taking advice from super successful people. And I noticed that there's a trend of people who've made IT explaining how worklife baLance is actually what's most important and how you can be powered by resentment or a sense of inferior cy or a chip on your shoulder or whatever. And it's a failure, I think, on the part of the guru to understand that the tools you need to get from not to fifty and not the same, you need to get from nineteen to ninety five.

And it's also a basic failure of memory, right? When you look at what got that person to where they are, it's precisely the traits that they now casting gating. Almost, almost everybody has more pain and resentment and fear in the beginning, which is why they all use IT.

And once you've achieved enough success and validation from the world to not be fuelled by that anymore, that's great. But that doesn't mean that people who are just starting out can achieve the success that you now have by using strategies which you only access after becoming a successful, right? Like it's almost like the luxury belief of success, kind of like rob henderson's luxury belief fs idea defunded.

The police, for instance, was pushed heavily by people that live in communities that didn't need a massive police presence. And you need holistic, baLanced drive is pushed by people who already benefit from their resentment fuelled obsession for a decade, right? Like, we have to be very careful modeling of what successful status ful famous people say that you should do in the beginning, especially if IT divergence heavily from what they did do.

The best question to ask is not, how does my favorite guru say people should behave to achieve success? Instead, IT would be, what did my favorite guru actually do when they were at my stage? Because that is a much more realistic idea of how you can emulate what they are doing.

Ali abdul has this great idea where he says about how you want to be teaching people that are three steps behind you. Because when your ten steps ahead, you can't remember the problems that you are having. Ten steps ago, and everybody falls into this trap, right? You the theory of mind against Stephen pinker's idea about the curse of knowledge, like once you know a thing, you can't imagine what it's not like to not know that thing.

And the the ability .

for people to jump back by, you know, three years, five years, a decade, twenty years is basically impossible. They can't remember where they were at. And we don't have some you know, photographic memory of the texture of our mind and of the way that we spend our time.

So yeah, a much Better way to do IT if you're looking at someone, is not to listen to what the same, but to look at what they did when they at the same stage. As you talking about realistic paths to difficult things, I came up with this idea about a realistic path to enlightenment. So as much as moving to a cave right in the woods and spending a decade in silent retreat might be grave, your spirit is not going to be doable by pretty much anyone.

And if you've meditated enough, you know that you accumulate moments tum mindful, this kind of like a swell moving under water, and after all the time, there's kind of a force and the power to your ability to drop into the present moment. Sometimes even little waves of genuine common sight break above the surface. And it's lovely.

But if you anything like me, IT doesn't result in an extended self perpetuating enlightenment. IT doesn't even really work on its own where your mindfulness sneaks up on you and you're in in the present moment without realizing. And i've done, you know, fifteen hundred sessions of meditation over the last five years.

Also, consistent meditation and a focus on mindfulness strengthens the thinking muscle that you use to wrangle your mind to actually exist. Right now, you you learn to punctuate your day with instances where your mind finally settles into the moment and then it's gone, but then you can get back later in the day. And as far as I can tell, this is the realistic path to enticement.

You're never going to become fully blessed sed out in perpetual, non dual astral realm syndication, right? But you can string together a few moments of peace so that at least for a few times each day, your mind rests where your feet a and I always used to think that this was a failure if I can achieve mindfulness, but then I lose IT. That's still not persistent enlightenment.

So I failed. And instead, I think it's smart to reframe the goal, if you can just have your mind in your feet in the same location five or ten times today, then that's a good start. And then maybe you can do fifteen or twenty or one hundred.

And that seems importantly both attainable and really useful. And just finding these moments where you can catch yourself this, you know, some, Harris said IT on the episode that I did with him. This is who inspired this.

And he said he was late coming to the podcast and he was rushing around in the house, rushing, rushing, rushing in him. His wife, who was leaving at the same time, were passing each other as he was sorting issues or whatever. And then he just caught himself, stopped picture up, gabor kiss, put IT down and left. And you know, that's a ten second puntuated of whatever obsessive machinations you've got going on in your mind that you're currently captured by until you stop and you luck and you realize where you are, and your mind and your feet are in the same location, and you do something with so much more intentionality in presence, and then you move on with your day and stringing together sequences of those kinds of moments, to me.

seems like it's so much .

more attainable, it's so much more realistic. And the that's kind of what i'm aiming for the moment. And maybe, you know, the jet mechano out that my fledged j mechano, who's like this super enlisting spiritual teacher would maybe that to me, being cocked and leaving IT on the table.

But again, you know that expectations and happiness thing, if your expectation is the only time that can be satisfied or feel grateful for the work that i've put in on a mindfulness level, is when I finally reach complete non dual fucked in enlightenment, it's not going to happen for pretty much anybody. So you're perpetually going to be dissatisfied with your own mindfulness practice. Whether I think this this seems to work, and I know that I can do, i've done every single person listening to this is a trine mindfulness.

She's almost all of you knows that you can do, you're washing the dishes and you just catch yourself and you actually feel the water hitting your hands, right? Or I love to do this when i'm driving, which is one of the sadder things about not driving out here in Austin, because IT takes forever to get a driver's license in america. The letter on the steering wheel, my car had little perforations in IT, and I remember if I was SATA traffic lights, like really trying to feel every single perforation on the string wheel.

And IT just puts you into the january. He puts you into the present moment. And you know that you can do IT. And you know that if you strong fifty of those together every single day.

that's pretty .

fucking in lightning to me to anyway, that's my realistic path to enlightenment. And you might have seen that I was hanging about Jimmy carr. Obviously, he came on the show, but we've been talking for quite a while. Turns out these a big fan of modern wisdom, and we've been chatting a lot.

And what's up in exchanging ideas? And then he did my show, my show in a reb sudden, rogan dropped, I think, within two days of each other, even the mind had been recorded like three or four weeks before. And he brought up to joe this idea that mean he had both been working on for a little while, which is the twenty four hu.

And this is one of the best questions, I think, to ask yourself when faced with a decision, which is, what would you tomorrow want you today to do? And it's something that i've relied on for a long time to help me get perspective and make Better choices. The reason that it's so effective, I think, is IT ribs you out of the moment and IT stops you from relying so heavily on the confused chemical signals coming from your body.

And instead, IT gives you a bit more distance, uh, a deep personalizes the decision that helps you treat yourself like a friend. You're responsible for helping in Peterson language, uh, IT forces you to optimize for long term thinking rather than immediate gratification. Uh, IT reminds you that ultimately decisions aren't being made for you.

Now that being made for you in twenty four hours and twenty four days and twenty four months, you can see our decisions as investments that we make into our future. And the more ruminative and deep of the thing that you are, the more you need to make decisions for your future, yourself and not yourself now that make sense. So optimizing to gratify your desires in the moment at the expense of the way that you will feel and the story that you will tell yourself about yourself in the future.

Israel, a good deal, because you live with the story of your decisions for far longer than the impact of them. So you have to choose wisely. And we don't have Crystal balls right to see the future.

But this is about as close to clare voice as I can think. Like, in fact, that I can't think of a single decision, which would be worse if I actually did what I wish that i'd done twenty four hours later. And I can't imagine if all you did was things that you wanted to do now, but you in the future would regret like A. Just direct path toward misery, right?

Like it's a guaranteed way to make decisions which you're going to have to not only live with the consequences of but for even longer than that, you're gone to have to live with the story that you tell yourself about being the kind of person who made that sort of decision and again, especially if your you know a introspective, reflective rumination sort of person who's going to think about the things that you do and tell yourself a story about what that means about you. You need to be very, very careful about what you invest into that future story of you because you know. The negativity bias is a hell of a drug.

And if he wants, if you have a predisposition to think of yourself as a bit of a piece of shit, you will permanently be scouting for any excuse to fit your payers. I knew, I knew that I was always gonna that thing. I, I, i've not changed at all.

This proves to me that i'm not the person that I thought I was. So yeah, decisions are as much about the sort of person that you will tell yourself that you are for having made the decision as the actual impact of the decision itself. And what would you tomorrow want you today to do? Pretty bullet proof, but difficult, right? Very difficult to do.

Because IT gives you pretty much nowhere to hide. This essentially know where to hide at all. And when you do make bad decisions, it's on you.

Anyway, there was another one from jet mechano who, again, spiritual enlightenment. Now, uh, I just, this guy's writing is so interesting, he writes with its degree of clarity. I don't believable writer and charleton, or definitely completely enlightened and crazy.

Dude, I love his box. Anyway, jim o shoney got me on to them, and he's got this quote that i've been thinking about for a while, which is relates to how hard we try to control our lives. He says, fear and ego are keeping your hand on the tiller.

Release the tayler for whatever reason, the steering takes care of itself. So if you think about what life would be like if you didn't grip the teller, so how the teller is the handle attached to the rudder on a boat is the thing that steers IT. And just thinking about, you know, you life is chaotic and there is a swallow or storm coming and you you grip on harder.

You try to wrangle control of your life more by applying more effort and pressure and cognitive horsepower. IT relates to something probably my favourite ever video from Morgane markers. So he stood on stage at the announcement of his new york times best selling book party, and he says, I spent so much of my life terrified of what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here, right now.

God, how much time did I waste? Afraid I wasn't going to be right here, right now, if I could change, the only thing I change about my whole life would be feeling less that I wouldn't get right here, the place I was going anyway. I wouldn't change all the mistakes and mishaps I needed those, but all the constant worry that I wasn't going to make IT that took me out of the moment, that took me out of enjoying these experiences, of smiling or eating my lunch, whatever I was doing.

No, your mission, have faith, are going to get there wherever you go. It's going to be all right. Just find ways to get out of your head. Pretty good.

So if you imagine that the outcomes in your life are predetermined, right? Imagine the way you're going to end up the achievement of your goals, the attainment of your pursuit are predestined and you're going there no matter how much you fear or worry now you still need to do the work. You still need to do the things, but you don't need to fear about completing the work or worry about whether you'll do the things.

The things you need to do will get done and the ones that you don't want, how differently would you experience life? You'd be able to just b right in the world, but not of the world, doing the things, but not afraid of the things cording to jet, he says, you observe events, and you allow the flow of things to do the steering. And you go where you go.

And I really think that there is something to this release. The teller is a mantra that I should tattoo on the inside of my islands. And it's good to be reminded of when we find ourselves gripping too hard to fears our expectations.

Because why fear about whether you're going to go to the place that you are going all along? It's a delicate baLance between agency, you know, which is one of the words that I used the most on this podcast, trying to internalize that local of control. You are able to make changes to your life.

You are able to lean in at such a but there is also a degree of anxiety and and concern and rumination and obsession in neuroticism, which is no longer helpful. It's it's not a part of you taking control. It's outside of you taking control and you faking or you confusing what you think for how you impact the world. That to me is A A really nice reframe, at least teller. So another one of the topics that we spoken about a lot over the last couple of being my .

culinary and you know .

a lot of guests, a lot of female guests as well, which I do appreciate. I wish. I wish that, by the way, how beautiful is this can get that I get that puppy um I wish in summer regards that IT was more accepted for men to be talking about masculinity again, not to say that it's not but you know political did a seven part series on men and there was zero male writers for IT are probably the most famous masculinity focused article over the last six months.

Was Christine number female? Uh, you know, so many of the people that i've been speaking to about this are women. And I get the impression at the moment that guys would happily take anyone speaking about their problem. So you know like a begger on the street, you give me the end of your sausage roll or give me two pens or give me whatever like i'll take what you get but um I do wish that IT was easier for men to have this conversation without having to prostrates themselves right on the well I I must before we get started, I must say that by focusing on the problems of men were not ignoring the problems of women and where that for a long time, you know, men did have some privileges apart from the war in the disease and the only forty percent of us reproducing all of that like these unnecessary caveats and the hurdles that guys need to jump up.

And especially in summer regards, if you are a Young dude that goes to the gym, right, you're just branded is some right wing firebrand, Andrew tate like a fucking from wish because that is how the mainstream media has captured all of the conversations around man. And it's just bit sucks. But anyway, I was trying after the conversation i'd had to work out why men struggling and and is largely a thankless less task like why is IT that is so hard to give men any attention or to give them much attention in the main story media? And I think it's because of a zero sum view of empathy.

So does an assumption that any attention paid toward men takes IT away from women or some of the minority group who is more deserving. Like, after all, haven't men had IT good for long enough? Maybe they should just suck IT up for a while, but empathy doesn't work in this way, right? Like it's not a limited resource.

And recognizing the plight of men does not ignore the plants of women. And ultimately women end up suffering in any case, because it's this increasing cohort of apathetic, checked out, resentful men who contribute to the exact lack of eligible partners the women say that they are struggling with. So the women who post like mocking tweet saying bohoo, poor, patriotic, sad, whilst also complaining wheel of the good man at it's just mating logic seppuku right? Like there's just if one sex loses, both sex is lose.

And I think the difference is the main difference is that at least when IT comes to women's problems and they have many of them, I think that you know five or ten years, years time, the actual big stories is going to be male body image and female crisis of femininity. I think that it's going to pivot worse at the moment. It's mostly in terms of the way that people appear, women's body standards and body types and men's mental health.

I think that's going to flip based on the trends. Male body, this mothery s is set to overtake women within the space of the next two decades. So everything's going to go outside. But anyway, male blame, right? A common question, I think, is why don't men just do Better, right? Surely they can just try harder in school and employment and in health like chop chop men, hurry up and stopping, so useless.

But no other group is told that when they suffer with poor performance or accusation in the real world, that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, like we don't tell any other group that they should just talk about their problems. Instead, we spend billions in tax, pay a funded money on private charity to set up committees, departments and campaigns and funds to solve the problem. So if a woman has a problem, we ask, what can we do to fix society? And if a man has a problem, we ask, what can we do to fix themselves? And it's a blatant double standard.

And anyone who is unwilling to admit the structural disadvantages faced by are standing in the way of us solving the problems that hurting men and the potential wives that they should be viable for, right? The problems are not in men's heads, but that out there in society. And we shouldn't gas, light men into thinking that they can solve these problems by just being less toxic.

Ally masculine, like if the patriot is so powerful, why aren't men flourishing more? right? The single biggest risk to a man and the age of forty is his own hands.

Christine number had this really lovely quote where he said a many men failed. That difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as winning from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of. Just because you're in the majority doesn't mean you don't need support.

So in this regard, modern men are being made to pay for the sins and the advantages that perhaps their fathers and that grandfathers enjoyed. And you know, it's just. It's such a shame that.

Many kind of told, if only you are less masculine, if only you were more like a woman, like most of the the only. In fact, mainstream, publicly acceptable versions of masculine ity look in awful lot like traditional femininity may need to open up more about their emotions. They need to not be so focused on status and prestige and mastery and conquering.

Uh, the regression needs to be tuned down. what? Okay, like I I get that but that's not fixing masculinity.

That's neutral masculinity, right? It's it's not are sanitise the bad elements that men are struggling from its sterilizing them altogether. And yeah, it's just it's not going to work. It's ultimately not going to work because you're fighting against biology.

And then there was a study I wish i'd read IT earlier on, but doctor john barry, who's on the show maybe six months ago, a center of female psychology, the lead for the center of male psychology, he said, having a negative view of masculinity, he damages boys and men's mental health. Brand new research assessing the views of over four thousand men found that thinking masculinity is bad for your behavior is linked to having worse mental well bing. Around eighty five percent of respondents thought that the term toxic masculinity is insulting and probably harmful to boys, although the direction accusation is indefinite.

right? Do negative views about masculine ity damage mental health, or does low mental health cause men to view masculinity negatively? It's clear that negative views of are linked to well being to a significant degree.

And on the other hand, having a positive view of mass culture is linked to Better mental well, bing and IT fits with other evidence that overlooked in the media. And everywhere the masculinely be beneficial to mental health, the news shouldn't really be any surprise to any average person on the street who actually recognize the value of masculinity. But much more people who are in academia and the media in the government probably don't.

This rax like exceptions, but the majority of information about masculinity that we all get exposed to is unreasonably negative. So you can be forgiven for thinking that men are the oppressors of women rather than the protective ves of women, than, interestingly, the study found that Better mental well, bing was associated with believing masculinity makes men protective of women. And worse, mental wellbeing was associated with believing masculinity makes men feel violent toward women.

So one of the implications of the study is that if we want men to have good mental health, a useful strategy might be to help them appreciate the ways in which their masculinity can have a positive impact on their behavior and the people around them. So the message to schools and the media in the government from doctor john barry is there is more to be gained by being positive. So it's time to stop being so negative about men and masculinity.

And if you were to think that is kind of IT almost like an information hazard, that the self fulfilling propac's of what you tell men, what you tell people about what they are and what that means, actually ends up changing the outcomes of their mental health. If you allow the media and academia to perpetuate a negative narrative about massu, lindy, that is directly linked to worse mental health outcomes of the men, that's almost like, i'd know like A A custom pathogen or something. The only impacts half of the population and only impact the mental health.

But just allowing that to be perpetuated and the presumption tion is, oh, you know like managers winning, they need to get over IT. It's like hanging in a second. I thought that the whole point of this was that we were trying to bring men along for the ride, and that we was possible care about the mental health.

So yeah, that's like that whole masculinity conversation. I'm really glad that I had so many great guest on, know, George from the ten man. Just phenomenal, super, super interesting dude talking about IT from a left this perspective, a Christine Amber talking about IT from a feminist perspective.

Really great. I think Richard d. Reves has got something new coming out next to or two, so he'll be back on I think you might now is going to be next year. Uh, anyway, uh, something else I realized I came, I came up with this rule called the parental cloud gage, which is how I work out whether a news story has reached mainstream significance or not and it's not when IT trends on twitter or hit daytime news or lands on the front page of a newspaper.

It's when my dad messages me about IT on facebook like that is holy shit like this is a big story uh you message me um maybe two years, eighty months ago saying, ah I see your friend mr. Rogan is in the news again and um he message something about Andrew tate as well. It's like you can be all well and good you know they can be like millions, billions of tweet trending on twitter.

That's that's fine. But when your mama, your dad message is you about something from your world that when you go, oh my god, like what this has got way out of hand and way too big. So the rule stands pretty well too, that it's only the biggest stories that actually cross the thresh hold from from the millennial to the millennial bom wall that's being built.

Yeah it's funny. I put out last week on my newsletter I put I put out a new theory about why women support body positivity so much, or at least a contributing element to IT. Um so i'm going to try and dance through this mine field here.

I do think that there's some there there, but up front, it's only a potential theory. So just hear me out. It's also not a comment on anyone as a person. So this is the rivalry theory of body positivity.

Female support for body positivity is at least in part, fuelled deep down by female interest, sexual competition, which pushes women out of the dating pool by discouraging them from losing weight. So bilbo, on one of his netflix specials where he did IT outdoors at red rocks, I think, said a quote, you guys are so into destroying each other. I see all that sneaky shit you do.

Ladies, if you could just support the W, N, B, A the way you support a fat check who's proud of her body in no longer a threat to you, that league would be doing Better numbers than the N, B, A. Oh my god, you're regardless. You're gorgeous.

You look great in that pekin. I, i'd kill myself if I looked like that. Keep eating. Keep eating. Lose a toe, you fat bitch. It's like if you saw an alcoholic, oh my god, your face down passed out, your kids are crying, you're a hero, you're a god. Keep doing what you're so that really got me thinking as I that's ruthless, but really, really smart.

And then there was this new study that just came out couple of weeks ago in the journal of personality and individual differences that kind of put a little bit more legitimacy to this idea than just like some comedians two minute segment. So they found that women who are high in inta sexual competitive ess are more likely to advise women who they perceive as potential mating threats to cut off more hair, potentially an an attempt to sabotage their attractiveness. The researchers studied for hundred and fifty women who are presented with hypothetical salon clients.

Participants were asked to cut off the amount of hair to recommend the amount of had to be cut off for each client. Women who reported high levels of intros sexual competitive ess were more likely to recommend the clans have more hair cut off when the he was in good condition, and clients expressed a preference for minimal cutting. And the reason behind this recommendation might be to suddenly manipulate the appearance of the rivals, right? Because longer hair is a queue to youth and health. By advising more extensive haircuts, these women could potentially diminish the physical attractiveness other women.

And another finding .

is that women advise clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hat. So in this scenario, participants effectively targeted women they perceived as being on the same attractiveness level, as that would suggest a form of competitive behavior, or called horizontal competition, when individuals compete with others of similar attributes or qualities.

So the choice to focus on women of similar attractiveness may be strategic. High attractive individuals may not pose a significant meeting threat to others because they likely already have access to high quality mates. On the other hand, targeting less attractive individuals might not yield the desired results, as their physical appearance might not be easily harmed through his style changes.

right. okay. So why do I think that this relates to the body positivity movement? Because as fast as I can tell, the parallel seem pretty obvious. Plus, you get social reno for standing up for myself at group.

And importantly, there's no body positivity movement for men, right? If a guy is unhappy with his body, either publicly or privately, most guys won't say something along the lines of, you know, you're absolutely gorgeous as you are. You shouldn't feel any discomfort between where you are and where you want to get to and women.

The justification for this from an each side perspective, is that women use indian aggression way more than men do. So men's inta sexual competition is more like a large sledge hammer. Whether women is like a poison araby coming. And i'm not saying that this is the entirety of the justification for female support for body positivity, but I think IT would be naive to say that IT doesn't contribute at all right now.

I imagine that this is going to be an unpopular idea because it's uncomfortable to realize that what we thought were altruistic compulsions might have a selfish undercurrent, but inta sexual competition is a hell of a motivator, and it's just no idea. But I do think that there is something here to do with this. And if I make IT through the next couple of weeks, then i'll be fine.

Another thing that i've been thinking about, a good bed that started, I guess, pivoting back into um a little bit of productivity stuff because the show has been a quite aggressive plus obviously neutronic launch, which has been like just so much work behind the scenes. And then life tour, which is island in U K. In dubai and canada and amErica supporting James meeting later this year.

And then just a ton of all of the cinema episode everything. There's been lots and lots of kinds pressure behind the scenes for me. So i've got back into thinking about, uh, productivity.

And though this idea from uh anacaona do that I totally forgot about, and then I was reminded of IT, and it's just, I fall in love with this. So this is productivity dismore pa. Productivity to more fear is the inability to see one's own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output.

IT sits at the intersection of burnout, impostor syndrome and anxiety. IT is ambitions alter ego, the pursuit of productivity exposes to do more, while robbers of the ability to save any success that we might encounter along the way. I've started thinking of this unhealthy relationship I have with my professional achievements as productivity to movie, anna said.

I have realized that this is an inability to see my own success. It's like i'm looking in the mirror of my professional life, and I don't see the published author staring back at me. All I see is a failure. So good dude. Productivity this movie is just this total jaded opinion of what we do, of the achievements that we have made, of the outcomes that we are uh, getting on a you know minute your daily basis, specially especially if you are a little bit more isolated when IT comes to the work that you do.

You know if you're a work from home kind of person to work for yourself for you know no mad entrepreneur type thing or you know anybody that just isn't is part of A A team that has very objective metric of success because who you comparing yourself to, right? How are you comparing your P T sessions that you do for your clients with someone else is where you can come in and do more P T session. You're in earlier late than than everyone else.

So you fit more into the same time and your clients get Better outcomes. But it's all kind of like fluffy stuff. It's really hard to work out. Okay, how much how much of that is really how much of that has got there there and how much of the rest of IT is just me be asking myself.

And then, you know, for the people that work at home, I did, I went to, I went to an office for the first time in probably two years, the back end of twenty twenty one. I want to go and see mike win IT, uh, from the entrepreneur series at his office in warrington, which is like not even manchester in the northwest of the U. K.

ah. And I want to go to see him and i'd you know just been locked in the house for quite a while uh, working for best part two years and then snap to kill us all the recipe. So we quite insulated and forgotten what Normal office like was the life was like.

And you know mix team, uh, hard working and they do that stuff and all the rest of IT. But I went in and just observed people, you know, that all of the fucking distractions that you have of an open plan office, that someone's going to get up and does anybody wanted coffee? And then, you know, ninety seconds or two minutes, everyone talks about the different coffee.

I once how to really great coffee from this place are the running of those biscuits left with the ones i've got the reasons in IT. what? What about the, uh, we going to have to go to.

We need to get more coffee with the water. And I realized that my perception of my own work rate was measured against some totally orbital review of perfection that was unrealistic anywhere else. And it's only when you get around other people. And you realized, especially in someone like an office, just how much slippage there is, so much just just things occurring that just chip away here and now. And this isn't to say that IT doesn't happen at home.

In fact, you know, for some people, maybe even for most IT also doesn't happen even more so home because looking over your shelter to make sure that you don't score instagram mao or check youtube or reply to emails when you are supposed to be deeply king or or do something else when you supposed to be replying to emails, like, I don't think that anyone situation is necessarily Better than the other, but other a definite personalities that lend themselves to one of the other being Better. But there is definitely a case to be made that you should see your level of productivity with a lot more equanimity than you, than you do. And this kind of leads into an idea I had about monk mode.

So i'd, I first learned about monk mode, fuck like two thousand and eighteen, probably probably two thousand and eight. And one of my friends, Jordan, sent me this awesome article from limitations. Man, who was kind of red pill before there was red pill.

But IT was much more to do with productivity and personal man's advice exclusively about dating and doing things for dating. Um but you know the last few years we've seen monkey really accelerate uh in magazine is a big proponent of I think is going on APP or something that the tracks your monkey mode uh so yeah it's grown. We hugely in popularity over the last few years, and it's especially amongst men, you know, popular self improvement strategy.

So for the people they don't know, monk mode is at least originally a productivity strategy. Are you retreat from the world to focus on three eyes, this introspection, isolation and improvement, and despite the recent ascendant, is nothing new. Like I say, that two thousand fourteen blog post that I read from limitation, men described that as monk mode is a temporary form of men going their own way by cutting yourself off from the rest of the world.

For a while, you can find you, your focus, calibrate your direction and confront yourself. You'll be acknowledging your weaknesses and then formulating a plan of action to deal with them. So the focus is on minimizing your time contributed to social obligations and junk activities because these consume much of your time White, yielding little to negligible increases toward your social market value.

So monk mode is a serious commitment not to be half asked. You'd rather doing IT or you're not. It'll be a struggle in the beginning once you fully engaged becomes beneficial and productive.

And there I say IT, even an addictive lifestyle. And that's the words of illimitable man. So it's that last bit. Even an addictive dara say even an addictive lifestyle.

So for me, right, the reason that I can comment on this is i've gone full monk mode a number of times in my life with really, really great success. I did two thousand and seventeen to two thousand and eight. Then I did mid two thousand and nineteen, basically straight through, covered until twenty one, when I moved out here.

I cut out alcohol for over two thousand days. In the last eight years, I did five hundred days without caffeine, fifteen hundred sessions of meditation, over five years of daily journals filled, like over three hundred sessions of yoga, five hundred sessions of stupid girls, big three, pretty much all of that done in a bedroom in newcastle, SAT on my own, usually first thing in the morning. And almost all of the most important progress that i've ever made was facilitated by a concentrated period like this.

So you might think, why have you got a problem with monk mode if you have benefit from IT so much? And I was such a powerful productivity tool for you, but it's the precisely monk mode. Reliable effectiveness creates a problem because the dark side is that addictive lifestyle thing.

The issue is monkey de justifies a retreat from life and risk and self adventure as IT justifies IT is self development. And IT makes you feel noble in isolation, so much so that I can become hard to bring yourself back out. This means that if you already have a tendency to live a shelter slightly on social life, you're encouraging yourself to further abscond away from ever building a real life support network, which is ultimately the thing you need the most in the long run.

And I saw this in a friend probably a decade ago. So he went on her a fitness journey. He was already pretty introverted and shy.

Then he had an upcoming fitness competition, which justified A P. M. Badd times and militant routines and the rejection of all social invites. The competition came and went, but the routine didn't change, and IT took years for him to revenge out into some sense of Normality. And this is largely a personal reflection for me as well, right? The a lure of perpetually working on yourself is very, very high because improvement is rewarding.

But if you're not careful, you can spend the rest of your life focused on those three eyes at the expense of the actual reason that you did monk mode in the first place to be able to show up in the world in a Better way. Bill pokings, that did the rote die with zero, who has now become a really good friend, says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And with monk mode, you practice in private so that you can perform in public.

Private practice in the extreme results in no public performance. So the fear is, I guess the summary is, don't obsessed for too long in solitude for personal growth, or you will struggle to reintegrate. And the best solution that I found, and kind of my strategic tactical takeaway, is the period diet, right? So you set a deadline for a month mode to end three to six months, I think, is a sweet spot in my experience.

You can do longer if you've not done IT before, in shorter if you've been doing a good bit. But if you do not set some sort of end goal, you are just going to continue to blast through whatever time. But what's the reason for you to ever reintegrate? And you hear this in youtube comments, and I get IT like I do.

I've been that i've been the person who was found the the comfort. I've not having to rely on other people of of always saying no to social invites to the point where you no longer need to say no, especially if you are a bit of people. Please feel like I am saying no to things is tough.

So creating a routine of people not inviting you because they know they are going to say no, also alleviate the nose that you have to say in future. A IT is so seductive and enjoyable to go and do this thing. But the reason that you want to go and do this isolation, personal development thing in the first place was to then reintegrate into the world as a level up higher social market value, more economist, more calm, more peaceful, more competent person with this whole new skills set and this degree of self love and self awareness.

And if you never actually bothered to reintegrate, or if you even make IT so difficult to reintegrate because you can't remember what it's like to not do that, it's dangerous. Like it's a, there are here, there be demons, or whatever is here, here, there be monsters. Something that can be really, really good in the first place can end up being toxic at hyde ses.

And I think monk mode is one of those. And I would have made life a little bit easier if I had just taken small breaks every six months are also, as supposed to, doing these much bigger, longer stretches where breaking the habit becomes super rough. So post content clarity is another idea that I fell in love with. And I was in a largely a lot of what i'm doing is trying to aggregate interesting shit from the internet and books and and other podcasts and use and stuff and then use them to instigate new ideas on my own around the show or in my writing. And um I was finding myself feeling, I don't know.

just unsettled.

Sometimes after I would consume certain bits of content, I wanted to create a rule for myself that would help me work out whether the content that I was consuming was making my life Better or worse. Ah because the problem is while you will watch anything, you're distracted by the content itself, uh, which 名字 you can't judge how the content impact to you during the consumption of IT the the creator of whatever your consuming has designed the content to be compelling and to keep you hooked because if they didn't， they'd beaten by another creator who just did not Better. But just because something is compelling doesn't mean that is good for you.

You will happily hate watch adversarial arguments to videos not because there's a fascinating question being answered, but because you want to make your team, you want to see your team, make the other team look silly and you pity follow accounts to check in on the slow motion car crash of whatever catastrophe is happening in some person's existence. Are you descend into score holes and browse twitter arguments as your heart rate gets jacked up through the roofing, some silent, apathetic bridge. But when you finish consuming IT, you forget you consumed IT and you move on with your life and you don't assess whether or not that was actually good for you.

So in this way, you're kind of like a shop owner in a shop with no walls. You're allowing your most valuable resource, which is your attention, to be stolen by whichever individuals are the most bold and aggressive. And then tomorrow you forget that they didn't pay you, and you allow them to do IT all over again.

So the solution, I think, is to ask yourself, how does watching different creators make me feel right? Some youtube channels are compelling and olympics hydro king, and they keep me watching. But I feel uptight and tense and negative and cynical and zero sum after watching them like I don't want to message my friends and tell them I miss them or pay people compliments or ring my mom or go outside and scene ata.

And I feel like the world is against me. And that's not the sort of content that I want to consume any of, no matter how much IT makes my doping fire right. On the other hand, you can watch content or read or whatever. Listen to stuff that makes you feel the most connected to the world, that makes you feel hopeful and open and prepared and informed and light and aligned.

If you think that your body is made up of what you put into your mouth, your mind is made up of things that you put into your eyes and ears, and your content diet should be spiral linear for the soul, not fast food for your a middle a so thinking very carefully about how you feel after you consume some content is the only fix for this. Because during the consumption of IT, IT is so compelling, and it's been designed to be that compelling. And if IT wasn't sufficiently compelling, you wouldn't be watching.

You'd be watching something which is more compelling. You can't really defeat the consumption of the content while you're consuming. And what you can do is assess how you feel afterward.

You know, if you go back through your youtube history, which is something that you can do and think, okay, how did I feel after I watch that? It's best to do IT probably, you know, five or ten minutes after finish up, check that as well. Sexy little new tonic cooler.

Think about how you feel after you finish watching something or or reading something, spending time in any social media and just reflect, okay, what I want to do that again tomorrow. And if not, start to tune down your use of that. You know, these are not interested or don't show this channel or not interested, I think a to um options that you can click when you see videos on your home feed.

So let's say that you watch some video and you don't like IT, uh, don't show this channel. You e'll never see that channel again on your suggested feed, right? Or in up next they got that that fixed, uh, if it's more platform wide, you know, you can delete the APP, uh, if you can managed to stick to IT.

George mac has this solution of his two phones where he's got a cocaine phone and he's got a kale phone. The cocaine phone is only on wifi, and the kale phone is one that goes around them on the time the cocaine phones got all of the bulge on IT and the call phone is just got like uber, audible and and kindle and stuff like that. Uh, George actually has an awesome rule.

Uh, he calls max content. Razer, would you consume your own content? If not.

don't post IT. awesome. right?

I asked bunch different guys over the last year whether or not they would consume the stuff that they make. And there's definitely a trend amongst guys who. Amongst the guys who seem more dissatisfied with their content creation life that when I asked him that question does like A.

Like do if he takes you more than five seconds to say yes, that's a fucking no, right? That's one of the advantages, I think. Like let's break the fourth wall about some contemporary 的， right? Like when .

you you don't ic .

bother when you start doing any content, the .

accepted wisdom .

is you should niche down, super, super hard capture and audience get the thousand true funds and then you can broaden from there because it's way easier to penetrate a very small cohorts or a narrow cohort. Then IT is to penetrate ross multiple cohort all at once. The problem is, as far I can see, very few people are just interested in one thing, like he did some obsessive cross fit people out there.

But even the most obsessive ross fit person is also into seventies jazz, you know and and rum comes and a loves to play pickle, you know, the cooking Bakery, whatever. Everyone is this Frankenstein's monster of idiosyncratic limes that kind of been attached to a all so and by niched down, super, super hard. What he does is get you known very, very well for one thing.

But in future that can often become your IT kind of like a kill his heel. But it's it's most a restrictive label. You know that my house mate started off in fitness for a long time and crushed is got some of the best fitness videos.

If you're talking olympic weight lifting, I think is the best on all of youtube, an olympic way lifting of super popular spot. But he's now at the stage of his life where he may never go back and compete an olympic way lifting again and he does much. You've got way more valid interest.

He's interested in philosophy and psychology in human nature and culture. okay? So he now has to pivot from that super like tight defined a niche to try and broaden out.

And as he does that the people who came for one thing are going to leave to look, it's not impossible to do. And I think that I could do a good job of IT. You want to watch, you want to watch out.

Someone does that. I guess you watch his channel over the next couple years. But something from my side, the would you consume your own content? If not, don't post IT .

if you are not .

engaged with the stuff that you are producing online, the sort of things that are talking about, the kind of stories that you're sharing on your instagram eeta. I just stop like don't do IT just make stuff and share stuff that you like, not that you think people will like.

Because ultimately, if you're only doing what people, what you think people will like, you become a puppet and you outsource your sense of self worth and all of the content creation to the crowd. You know, these episodes on to know is, well, an r and ten minutes or something waffling on about bro philosophy horse sheet that i've like pulled out of my pulled out the last nine months of life in the hopes that something's interesting. But it's what I would have wanted ten years ago, like this entire show is what I wished that I had when I was twenty five.

And starting to realize is probably more to the world than just getting drunk party. All right, where do I start? So and is still largely is all of the lessons still largely on so yeah, all right, let's do.

Let's do too much. I've got this this like double up from mark manson. He's great. So this is um about resilience. The willingness to be disliked is a superpower.

If you developed the willingness to be disliked, you will inevitably have the courage to do the hard things that most people are not willing to do. This will then imbue your life with a sense of meaning and importance. You will also lead to success that others will be too intimidated to go after.

But I would go even further than this. I would argue that until you're comfortable with the disapproval of others, you are not truly a free individual yourself. You must develop the ability to be disliked in order to free yourself from the prison of other people's opinions.

Learn to do what's right, even if others think I might be wrong. Learn to tolerate criticism and negative feedback, because that's what will make you Better. Learn to be laugh, hated on controlled, because if you can become comfortable with the hate, you'll be fucking unstoppable.

And he's got this or that. Was that book the courage to be disliked by some japanese author whose name are going to absolutely butcher? And I haven't read, but i've heard is really great.

He also told me about choose your suck. Every single pursuit, no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous IT may initially seem, comes with its own brand of shit sandwich, its own lousy side effects. Everything sucks some of the time. You just have to decide what sort of sucky you're willing to deal with. So the question is not so much.

What are you passionate about? The question is, what you passionate enough about? Did you can endure the most disagreeable aspect of the work? Because if you love something and want something enough, whatever IT is, then you don't really mind eating the shit sandwich that comes with IT.

And mark said this on the episode that we did a couple of month ago while he mentioned that when the blog sphere started kicking off a few years ago, maybe a decade ago, so, uh, he would go to these conventions and I think his blog post, he would maybe do multiple thousand, two thousand, three thousand word essays per week. And he would be asked, I think, by other people, how he was able to put out such a high volume of content. And he said something on lines of like IT, IT, IT just comes IT comes a combination of easily to me.

And the difficulty comes easily to me, too. I got that interesting. The difficulty comes easily to me to like that the shit sandwich that he's prepared to eat.

And I think IT helps to make you much more aligned with what you want. Anything that you want to pursue is going to be. It's onna, have an amount of associated pain.

And the best predict is not who loves the thing the most. The best predict is who else can do with the sock that comes along with whatever you want to do the best. So yeah, orienting yourself toward the difficulties as opposed to toward the pleasures.

Will no one, very few people stop doing a thing, or don't cheap success because of a lack of pleasure? It's a more in increase of pain, I think. Yes, sure, you need positive reinforcement, but you get that from the dopamine of just making progress, in any case, the pains that you come up against the burn out self doubt.

God, i've got to do that thing. I've got to get the paint rush out and get the use, whatever that's really what's going to causing to stop as far as I can see. So yeah, orient itself towards pains.

Uh, and that would be the best way to do this. Uh, anyway, you tonic dot com, go try this. Get yourself a case right now.

It's available on amazon prime next day delivered UK ungs. You can get that right now and you tend to common search on amazon for N E U T O N I C. And that's pretty much IT. I will see you in nineteen eight .

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